Temporary or semi-permanent support surfaces are used for roadways, remote jobsites, industrial staging areas and the like in an ever-increasing myriad of industries, such as construction, military, oilfield, transportation, disaster response, utilities and entertainment. These support surfaces often include mats and/or other components that are interconnectable by removable connectors, also called locking pins, inserted into aligned connecting holes formed therein.
Many presently known support surfaces and locking pins have one or more disadvantages. For example, various know locking pins are not adjustable to form a tight connection of adjacent mats/other components, not useful in situations where one or the more of the adjacent mats or portions thereof are imperfect, of different thickness, warped, uneven or otherwise not abutting, not useful in other non-ideal situations (e.g. uneven underlying surface), or a combination thereof. For another example, various presently known locking pins do not have the ability to engage misaligned locking pin holes, align them and draw the mats laminar.
It should be understood that the above-described features, capabilities and disadvantages are provided for illustrative purposes only and is not intended to limit the scope or subject matter of this disclosure, the appended claims or those of any related patent application or patent. Thus, none of the appended claims or claims of any related application or patent should be limited by the above discussion or construed to address, include or exclude each or any of the above-cited features, capabilities or disadvantages merely because of the mention thereof herein.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved systems, articles and methods useful for connecting mats and/or other components having one or more of the attributes or capabilities described or shown in, or as may be apparent from, the other portions of this patent.